One Year Ago…

I thought it would be fun to look up the blog that I wrote one year ago today. Here is what I had to say 365 days ago:

Mark and I love change! When everything is going so smoothly that you can do it with your eyes closed and you’re so comfortable with the system that you can relax, something begins to bubble up inside of us. How can we do this better? How can we involve more people in the system? How can we make the dream bigger and harder to reach?

We feel that need to stir things up again now that we are two years into this church plant. Honestly, I’m relieved. I thought that starting a church would be so hard that it would take a decade to settle down again. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to make this whole thing seem easy, but God gave North Creek so many amazingly competent people that we have it down pretty well.

I’m excited in my spirit. I’m a big fan of faith. If I can do it in my own strength, it’s not very fun for me. If God has to show up to make it work, that’s where I like to live.

So, let’s all get ready for the next ride. It’s always a ton of work, but the stories that come out of it are worth the expense!

It is SO interesting to me that I feel a very similar way now that I did a year ago. That feeling however comes with having followed our gut from a year ago and stepping out in faith to pursue a new building opportunity that resulted in nearly tripling in size as a church. In that number represents many people who have come to church for the first time, some wounded by church who needed healing, some who moved here and needed a new home. Those numbers also represent the launch of a youth ministry, the launch of a second service, multiple staff changes (no one leaving, just reassigning jobs!), and new small groups. Our culture changed, our way of doing ministry changed, but our mission remains the same.

And here we go again. My gut however says that the next challenge/opportunity that God has before us will not be so much faith as it will be managing. I feel that we are on the edge of a new season of growth. Growth comes with growing pains and although it is a fun season, it also means the birth of new services, new campuses, new small groups, new leaders, new pastoral staff, new systems, new teams…new dreams. Hmmm…God, bring it on!